Dakinis in the Cellar

(first written down, Berlin 1998)

A familiar feature from my childhood was my parents' "unfinished basement". We played down there, my mother hung wash there in bad weather, we sometimes slept there, we stored boxes of merchandise, my father kept his desk there, my brother instructed me in oil paint and led his two younger siblings in some very creative scenario building for play there. It was (for a child) a large area, divided not by walls but by two-by-four beams, structures through which you could easily slip from one "room" to the other.

These became the basis for the "trees" in the following dream. The Basement was also for me very spooky, and I feared it as an Abode of My Unconscious in childhood as much as I used it regardless of this.

The dream may have recurred twice or three times, or else the one time I dreamt it just made that strong an impression; in any event, I was no older than 12 by my reckoning.

I was familiar then with two story-settings and their brutal endings which no doubt influenced the set-up of the dream: Grieg's “Peer Gynt“ and the Greek classic of Artemis/Diana being inadvertantly caught bathing by a young man out hunting with his hounds. In both cases the male intruder meets with a rather nasty end.

So – I'm dreaming of being in The Basement which is now a woods, I'm watching through the 2x4 "trees" onto what really is an open concrete floor but in the dream is a wooded clearing, a bit surreal: green, dank, earthy, breathing with nature's primal heat, quiet, serene, yet full of anticipation.

At first empty, there quietly enters an auspicious assembly of, at most a dozen maidens. They are dressed, but etherically/erotically lovely – their entire color is blue, soft and glowing, and they are, it appears, ghosts or spirits as it were, not corporeal – yet no less desirable.

I watch and I sense that for all my je-jumping hormones, I should keep a respectful distance, exercise some restraint, and keep still. Good call, as it turns out. For just a few feet away from me to my right I notice a young fella (older than I however) suggesting Peer Gynt or the Greek hunter. He's dressed a little haphazardly, bloused sleeves and open shirt and all, hair unkempt, his eyes innocent yet rolling out of control, his face breaking into a sweat: He Can't Handle This. He watches too, as the maidens form a circle and dance like fairies or like Isadora Duncan, as surreal as they are sensual. But nothing happens – yet. (I gasp.)

Well, the kid finally breaks down and dashes into their midst, throwing himself into the dance – did he also make a grab at one of the ghostly maidens? I think so – and of course, could not. The female Master standing in the middle of the circle was none too pleased and gave a thought-command. With a fury the poor guy was pounced on by all, and rent asunder.

As this occurred, or perhaps immediately after – the female Master gave me a very direct and auspicious glance, and with a sober and compassionate face of lovingkindness communicated wordlessly to me: "OK, Joe, this was a test and you just passed – so don't make the same mistake he did with your erotic gifts; you're fortunate to see what you got to see and make it out of here; now here's a gift from me to you: you will grow to understand and appreciate deeply the finer Being of Woman and what she really Is, and this itself will bless you." I'm paraphrasing here, but that was it.

Considering this twenty years later I thought of what our Murshida back in our Boulder group used to call the "Invincible Woman" and I thought of the Dakini-energy which accompanied our training. And I saw this adolescent dream sequence in a better light.

Two deades still later as of this first writing, I think I got that right.

That Master-woman in my dream was the Invincible Woman, the assembly may well have been the Dancin' Dakinis. And it doesn't take Carl Jung to figure out that I'm both "me" and the "other guy" in the story. My life bears out the truth of this dream.

http://samuelinayatchisti.blogspot.de/2011/08/invincible-woman-internalized-from.html